Digital photography is a well-known art form that is used by millions of professional and amateur users to produce digital images of a selected scene or view.
Until recently, the digital camera's prime function was capturing images and manufacturers have mainly focused on increasing the performance of the digital photograph (e.g. increasing mega-pixel count, shortening boot-up time, shutter lag and shot-to-shot delay, offering more optical zoom lens choices, reducing power consumption, etc). Yet enhancement of the digital image, for either creative or corrective purposes, remained a post-exposure, post-download process dependent on secondary devices and photo-enhancement software for the PC.
Known in the art methods for enhancing the digital image include In-camera editing methods. This method can be applied to a range of image corrections, including contrast, noise, edge definition, blur and eliminating red-eye. Of these, red-eye correction is receiving the most attention.
Other approaches known in the art disclose digital cameras, which are limited to inserting and viewing a selected graphical object in predetermined areas of the field of view only and do not enable modification of the selected graphical object in relation with the field of view of a photographed image before the subject or field of view is captured.
Modification of a photographed image by digital manipulation is also well known, and can be performed using a wide variety of software programs. There is a special value in offering context-dependent graphical objects for enriching the photographed image in theme parks and other tourist-intensive sites, where “on site” photography is a popular part of the visitor experience.
Several methods known in the art apply manipulation of a digital image by inserting external graphic elements into the image. Such methods are enabled, among other means, by large libraries containing a variety of graphical objects, also known as “clipart”, that are available from many software publishers.
However, such methods limit user flexibility, since users can only modify the digital photograph by adding the graphical elements after the image has been captured. This prevents the user from matching the graphical elements with the original scene by manipulating both of them. It leaves the photographed scene as given, such that the user is able to manipulate only the graphical elements, by way of on-board graphic editing of the image. As a result, many creative opportunities are missed as the user cannot manipulate the subjects or the field of view before the image is captured.
Therefore, there is a strong need to provide an easy-to-use system and method providing modification of photographed image by applying digital manipulation, such that the digital manipulation is applied before the image is captured in order to enable the user to view the image before it is captured and to verify that graphical objects are composed in relationship with the object in the scene.